Thanks for the reminder! Seems fitting that I made my civ students read part of your introduction for today's class on sub elite labor.

This Is Just To Say

I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update

and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize

Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying

The Columbine massacre was on this date in 1999. Instead of energizing our country to get gun violence under control, it kicked off a new normal. One of the best explanations ever of journalism's destructive impact on mass shootings came from Roger Ebert in his review of Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant.”

The currently escalating tech backlash must be put in the context of:

“people have been listening to the most insufferable techbros in the world gleefully threaten everyone else with mass unemployment for over 6 years, and they’re sick of their shit”

Gonna spend the next two years spamming every elected Dem about the concept of "damnatio memoriae." Chisel his name off every inscription. Build over the various Trump Towers like they're Nero's Golden House. Remove him from physical memory, not to forget but as a sign of disrespect to the man.

this is it right here. AI violates Vonnegut's number 1 rule for writers: "Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted." AI shifts the burden of effort from the writer onto the reader/audience and that is unacceptable

Were...were they anticipating the equivalent of an Odyssey recitation? Or just extrapolating from Oppenheimer?

[Werner Herzog voice] And yet, does Luigi not persist in exploring the haunted mansion? Does he not confront this same fear of lingering death as he brings these haunted souls to rest with his vacuum cleaner?

"Complimentary" to mean "free" always made me wince, but now I find out that apparently this is my own personal Mandela. (I could've sworn it used to be complementary...)

Not if that job is physical comedy

Sword & Sorcery is when the soft animal of your body has to slay a fucking necromancer.

My dad once had this gigantic Rottie-mix who steadfastly ignored the neighbor’s hysterical male Sheltie. Then one day the Sheltie got loose and went at him in full view of like ten people and the Rottie sighed, grabbed the Sheltie, and dragged him into the barn.

Just remembering that for no reason.

...and then there's the third thing of archaeology.

I've always found the framing around men and women's dating choices re political "opponents" really telling. Men are supposedly more tolerant - but for the most part they're not being asked to date people who literally view them as second-class citizens undeserving of bank accounts and voting rights

I'm the product of state schools and I'm passionate about their value.

(Though I will gently point out that UIUC is shockingly* expensive for a state flagship, with about $20k for in-state tuition alone.)

*Shocking to me; UNC was/is much cheaper. I'm looking @ flagships & UIUC still seems high.

“That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”

― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

I'm a broken record on this but the radicalisation and brain rot of Gen X/boomers is a massively under-appreciated problem

I do not want to create an account or open a subscription I just want to buy a thing and never hear from you again why is this so hard.

this race-bending the new musketeers thing is taking it way too far, next they'll be claiming Dumas was black or something

This is a valid point: whenever you see this sort of high-pressure sales tactic turned on a technology, you can be CERTAIN that it's a fake—actually useful new tech sells itself!

And don't underestimate the effectiveness of FOMO as a tool in the hands of a con artist.

Exactly one year ago today:

Reminder that there is empirical research to prove the “when the person speaking was 12” point. It’s called Reminiscence Bump and it’s literally from ages 12-14. psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-...

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit

Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here

Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse

Media and universities: AI is here to stay

i can't stop thinking about jd vance laysplaining st augustine to the pope

Opinion | Trump’s credibility problem is now America’s Neither the president’s threats nor his promises nor his deals can be taken at face value.

Core to Trumpism is the belief that acting like a huge asshole is strength and gets you want you want, while not acting like an asshole is weakness and doesn't.

But what if that's not true?

What if credibility—acknowledging reality, honoring agreements, following through—actually does matter?

screencap of a tweet with a photo at the bottom of JD Vance giving a talk, gesturing smugly with his hands Eric Daugherty • @EricLDaugh • 1h • JD VANCE RESPONDS TO POPE LEO: "When the Pope says that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword - there is more than a THOUSAND year tradition of Just war Theory." "In the same way that it's important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it's very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology." "And I think that one of these issues here is that there has been - if you're going to opine on matters of theology, you've got to be careful, you've got to make sure it's anchored in the truth, and that's one of the things that I try to do, and it's certainly something I would expect from the clergy, whether they're Catholic or Protestant."

I’ve given this a great deal of thought, trying to come up with the perfect joke for this moment, and this is what I have so far -

POPE LEO: our religion teaches that this war is bad

VANCE: wow, who died and made YOU head of the Catholic Church??

POPE LEO: well, you should know, you were there

I keep hearing people say "don't worry about elections," and folks I spent years writing about people on the local level who want to destroy democracy in the name of Religion. I actually don't think it's just Trump we have to worry about.

Again: for any big liberal donor who wants to funnel millions into fixing this country's politics, the ROI on buying any struggling paper and simply tasking it with doing real reporting on local news is vastly higher than the same $$ given to some group that does mass ad buys every election year.

Good thread. Accurate, too.